Mmatlou Kalaba, University of Pretoria
Droughts have become more commonplace in South Africa in recent years. In the past two decades since 1990, 12 of those years were defined as drier years compared to only seven years in the previous 20 years.
The latest period included three consecutive years of drier...

China has set an economic growth target of 6.0 to 6.5 per cent in 2019, down from a target of around 6.5 per cent growth in 2018, the government has said.
While presenting a report which detailed the country’s economic and social development plans for 2019 to the national parliament,...

The 35-day partial shutdown of the US government cost the economy about $11bn and reduced the country's growth forecasts by 0.2%, according to official estimates.
The longest such shutdown in history, triggered by a stand-off between the president and the Congress over funding for a border wall, affected nearly 800,000...

As a major step towards ending the austerity measures the country had adopted to deal with an economic crisis, Greece has announced an increase of the country's minimum wages.
Greece’s prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said that the standard monthly minimum wage would rise by 11%, from €586 (£509) to €650....

A new report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has urged the world to seize the opportunity offered by technological changes to improve the quality of working lives, expand choice, close the gender gap, reverse the damages wreaked by global inequality, through decisive action.
The Global Commission on the Future...

The global economy grew at a “steady” 3.1 per cent last year and this relatively strong growth is to continue in 2019 too, UN’s chief economist has said.
Elliott Harris, the economist, however, said that the growth was uneven and risks such as accelerating trade tensions and rising national debt...

Chinese economy grew at the slowest pace since the global financial crisis, as the latest data reveals the growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 from a year earlier was 6.4%.
The slowdown comes at a time of an ongoing trade war with the United States and the government's focus on...

Twenty-six richest people own as much wealth as 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population, shows a new report by Oxfam.
The number came down from 43 in 2017, indicating a further concentration of wealth.
The wealth of the more than 22,00 billionaires increased by...

Nic Cheeseman, University of Birmingham
Should democracies give foreign aid to countries that are not democracies? Democratic aid donors don’t have enough money to do all the things they want to in the world, so they need to find ways to decide how to ration aid. This means that not...

Latin America recorded the highest level of extreme poverty in nine years in 2017, the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has said in a report.
According to the report, extreme poverty -- the share of people who cannot afford basic foodstuffs -- increased from 9.9 per...